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“I think at that time, we knew that the storm was coming but we did not know it was going to be that big. We did not know it was going to be a tsunami.”
These words by Saijai Liangpunsakul indicate her foresight regarding the unchecked spread of online hate speech during the escalating Rohingya crisis, which ultimately led to it being declared as a genocide. An expert in addressing the harmful impacts of technology on women and marginalized communities, Saijai holds a Master's in Public Administration with a focus on tech policy from Harvard Kennedy School. In particular, she has focused her expertise and passion for this topic on the situation in Myanmar.
Saijai's path to becoming a pioneering figure in Myanmar's digital rights, digital trauma, and survivor support landscape was anything but linear. It began far from online tech hubs, in the deep south of Thailand. Despite her passion for education, the daily two-hour train journey to school and rigid rules of the Thai education system felt stifling, igniting a yearning for something better. A chance to get a scholarship to Japan seemed like a perfect exit. She passed the written test; however, she failed the interview because, as she puts it, she wore “the wrong shoes”—a pair of sandals, the only pair she owned. This seemingly minor cultural faux pas seemed to short circuit her dream. Yet this setback gave rise to a new and unexpected opportunity: a full scholarship to the World United College, a consortium of 18 schools and colleges worldwide. She attended three such schools, the first being in Costa Rica.
At just fifteen years of age and with no English or Spanish skills, Saijai found herself in a small village halfway across the world. It was a period of intense solitude, which she mainly spent studying, and which taught her “to be able to deal with uncertainty and be okay with it, be comfortable with it.” After Costa Rica, she continued her education in Canada, at another World United College-affiliated school, Pearson College. Later, she studied at Middlebury College in Vermont, in the United States, where she got her Bachelors, majoring in Economics and Arabic.
The first seed of her eventual passion for Myanmar was sown while at Middlebury, when she volunteered to work with Karen refugees resettled in the US. Through shared meals and the refugees’ stories of displacement, the Bamar-centric narrative about the country that she had learned in Thailand was challenged. Saijai, whose name fittingly means “the link between two hearts,” found a surprising resonance with their homesickness. As part of her Arabic language studies, she participated in an exchange program at Alexandria University, where she studied Middle Eastern media. Her time in Egypt fortuitously coincided with the “Arab Spring” of 2011. Seeing her Egyptian friends leverage Twitter to organize protests and ignite a revolution was a revelation – she experienced firsthand the potential of digital tools for social change.
That fascination matured into a professional pursuit after graduation. First, she worked with a startup called Dimagi, an organization that harnesses mobile technology to promote healthcare awareness and access in remote areas around the world. Her job took her across Indonesia, Zambia, and South Africa. Her next destination was supposed to be Nepal, but a two-week stopover in Myanmar in 2014 changed everything. Saijai felt an instant connection – the unique smell of the airport, the sight of the pagodas…it all captivated her and has remained lodged in her memory until this day. “I just fell in love with it,” she says. “A lot of the best things in my life also happened by accident, and Myanmar was one of them.” Arriving just as internet prices plummeted and connectivity exploded across the country, she saw the excitement of a nation embracing the digital age. and decided to establish a country office for her organization, firmly rooting herself in Myanmar’s burgeoning digital revolution. In this way, her “two-week detour” eventually grew into six years.
However, she began to understand that the initial optimism surrounding Myanmar's digital revolution had a dark side. As mentioned above, Saijai watched in alarm as the early promise of technology gave way to the insidious spread of hate speech, in particular against the Rohingya; she even saw her friends and neighbors succumb to its influence. Her work with Dimagi started to feel increasingly irrelevant to her in that environment, prompting a shift in her professional trajectory. She joined Phandeeyar, a digital rights organization, to directly confront the emerging threats. It was there that she gained a more intimate understanding of social media’s shortcomings. For example, she learned that Facebook only had two people at that time who were charged with doing all the content monitoring regarding Myanmar, a herculean task that was quite literally impossible to fulfill with so few people assigned to it.
Saijai describes the confluence of factors that created a digital catastrophe. “It is important to understand that this is not just actors who just create hate on Twitter against the Rohingya. It is a state propaganda too!” She explains that the ingredients needed to form that perfect storm of online harassment were all there: the military's disinformation campaign, nascent technology, low digital literacy, and pre-existing conflicts. Despite her efforts to warn Facebook, develop a hate speech lexicon, and conduct digital literacy initiatives, the tsunami crested. Tragically, some of the victims of that digital violence continue to suffer with little to no redress.
The challenges of Myanmar’s online landscape have only intensified since the 2021 coup. Now unable to physically reach many activists, as scores have fled the country or gone into hiding, the danger is higher than it has ever been. “It has become a digital battleground,” Saijai says simply, detailing how Telegram has replaced Facebook as the primary platform for doxing and harassing women and LGBTQ+ individuals who speak out. Deepfakes, intimate image abuse, and other forms of tech-facilitated, gender-based violence are rampant, yet Telegram offers very little engagement or support. The scale of this problem is shocking: a nationwide survey conducted by Saijai’s team revealed that 44% of respondents were currently experiencing online harassment, and 85% had no idea where to turn for help.
Beyond the professional, Saijai also admits that on a personal level, she was also seriously harassed online; she describes it as an ordeal that made her “just want to disappear.” This personal trauma helped galvanize Saijai to create direct support systems for survivors, highlighting the profound gap in services, and solidifying her conviction that if her team didn't establish this support, nobody would.
Her efforts gave rise to two significant organizations that address these challenges. One is Myanmar Witness, which was born in the coup’s immediate aftermath. It is part of a community-driven initiative to document human rights abuses. With some outside help, it has meticulously archived over 8,000 cases, sending its data to international justice mechanisms and media outlets to ensure that Myanmar is not forgotten.
However, Saijai realized that documentation alone, while important for future justice, offered little immediate relief to those suffering daily, as the legal process is often so painstakingly slow. This fueled the creation of the other organization, Stop Online Harm, a pioneering “online ambulance” providing comprehensive support to survivors. This unique service is formed of three critical pillars: technical support to remove harmful content, often in partnership with platforms like Meta; psychosocial support to address “digital trauma,” a concept for which Saijai says we “do not even have the language to talk about;” and documentation/legal pathways. Stop Online Harm’s goal is simple: when a survivor reaches out, they will be able to find all relevant services under one roof.
A significant achievement for Stop Online Harm has been its partnership with Meta. Driven by the philosophy that “we need to solve the problem where it is happening,” Saijai’s team brought their compelling survey data to Meta. This led to campaigns promoting online safety and Meta’s assistance in disseminating their educational videos. Yet, she explains that the fight is far from over. Other platforms, like Telegram, remain largely unresponsive, and even supportive platforms like Instagram lack vital in-country support mechanisms for Myanmar users searching for terms like “suicide” or “harassment.”
Saijai elaborates on what she calls the “devastating” situation in Myanmar, where real-life sexual and gender-based violence increasingly intersects with tech-facilitated abuse. She describes rape incidents recorded for blackmail and the use of AI-generated deepfakes and manipulated voices shared on Telegram channels to lure and exploit. Compounding the trauma is the pervasive shame many victims feel—especially women aligned with the resistance, who carry a double burden: the personal violation itself, and the fear that speaking out might fracture the very movement they support. As Saijai explains, while abuse by the military is widely acknowledged, it becomes much harder to speak up when the perpetrators are actors within the resistance. In such cases, her organization maintains a strictly apolitical stance. “What we are trying to do right now is just to support people who have been victims of both sides to come and have a place that they could get help.”
To confront this landscape of harm, Stop Online Harm champions the power of community, allowing survivors to hear others’ stories and find strength in shared experience. Simply knowing “you are not alone” becomes the foundation for survivor support and prevention workshops. Saijai also stresses that online harassment transcends gender: while women are disproportionately affected, men, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with disabilities are also frequent targets. Their commitment remains to the survivor, regardless of who the perpetrator is.
Navigating such emotionally taxing work demands resilience, and Saijai integrates self-care strategies into her organizations’ work, such as a four-day work week to prevent burnout. Her Buddhist background and meditation practice are foundational, teaching her to detach from the ego of work, allowing her to engage deeply without being overwhelmed. This disciplined yet compassionate approach enables her to confront the horrors while maintaining inner balance; she views her work as an opportunity to practice dharma and grow as an individual.
Despite her globetrotting past and many career options going forward, Myanmar has become Saijai’s anchor. The resilience, kindness, and unwavering spirit of the artists, activists, and ordinary people fighting for Myanmar's future continually inspire her. “Burma has given me everything!” she exclaims. “It is not that I am giving to Burma; it is the opposite! I went to Burma when I was 26. It was the place I fell in love, had my heart broken, made a lifelong friend, figured out who I am as a person, and all of the experiences happening because of Burma,” she says.